Our exhibition at Red Bull Space in Paris, Gallery 12 Mail opened April 28 2017. The exhibition will be up for 3 months, you can visit it Tuesday-Friday 14-18h. Further information can be found on LesInrocks

OPENING: 28 APRIL – STARTING FROM 6PM
The expo is on from the 28th of April till the 12th of May 2017

Pinar&Viola’s Recharge Station, will make you rediscover the value of something very simple, innocent and romantic as a tent. Recharge Station offers a contrast with our metropolic-forever-connected-lives. In this exhibition you can immerse yourself in a personal space constructed of wood and textile carrying Healing Prints. Recharge Station is inspired by how we used to construct blanket forts like when we were kids…

Bunny Michael is a genderqueer interdisciplinary artist who creates dreamy, femme-centric images that examine spirituality, nature, and how both connect to form an ultimate “higher self.” Bunny works primarily in photography, video, music, and performance using their own image to deliver a message of transcendent self-discovery, encouraging viewers and other artists to connect to the non-corporeal aspect of themselves. As an art form Bunny utilizes self-portraiture, doubling their image to fashion parables that examine the relationship between the masculine and feminine, the body and the soul. For example, their music video for their cover of Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” displayed two of Bunny’s personas dancing and floating through a pastel, sensual, otherworldly reality. Recently they have been creating memes that exist on social media platforms that utilize their dual personas, making cheeky commentary on the avatar as higher self. Another persona they’ve been exploring is called “Khum Princess,” an angel/priestess who creates her own, psychologically charged songs separate from Bunny’s other music. Themes that tie together all of Bunny’s works regardless of medium are vulnerability, spirituality, sexuality, feminine energy, self-image making, and transcending worldly restraints such as gender and capitalism (source: Posture Mag. Click posturemag.com to read an interview with Bunny Michael).

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” is published in 1989 in Peace and Freedom Magazine (a publication of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom). The text is written by American feminist and anti-racism activist Peggy McIntosh. She wanted to identify the daily effects of the white privilege in her life. She states: “ I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant” to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”

Even though 1989 seems a long time ago, the “Invisible Knapsack” is still very much present and alive in Western Society. Anno 2017 there is still a lot of healing needed of white people’s blindspots for this deep rooted inequality.
The discussion about #WhitePrivilege seems to have more attention again for the general public. Putting an end to white privilege is part of the radical change that mankind needs to make. It’s an important change in the many other changes mankind needs to make. Everything seems to be deteriorating – from ecology to economy. The ruling elites are dysfunctional, and getting more dysfunctional day by day. We need to make an end of these live degrading systems and we have to start with ourselves. We have to wake up. It’s time to speak hard truths with love.

Here you can read more background information about the publication and Peggy McIntosh’s thoughts behind it.

In this video Paul Mooney Explains what most whites just don’t get about racism.

Here you can see Wit Is Ook Een Kleur, a recently launched Dutch documentary about the presence of white privilege in The Netherlands.

Click here for very simple but impressive 47 seconds video about white privilege.

Special thanks to Jasper Griepink who tipped us about Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.

Climate Guardians is an artistic political act by ClimActs, an Australian theater group. Climate Angels are a group of engaged women, dressed in white with enormous wings, creating breathtaking climate protest. Their use of the angel iconography highlights the vital role of guardianship of our world’s precious natural resources. The angelic activists appear at major rallies, backdropping or intercepting political events, and bringing a theatrical and angelic presence to public demonstrations as well as non-violent direct actions to support demands for climate justice.

As Pinar&Viola, we were asked by Adidas Head Quarters in Germany, to rejuvenate their archival imagery. The assignment has been given by the beginning of 2016 in order to create intrigue for their flagship store in NYC which opened last week (beginning December 2016). During theis project, we payed regular visit to Adidas Headquarters in Herzogenaurach and befriended the curator of their archives.

As a result, we created a collection of images where adidas athletes come together in a ground with no space, time and gender. Inspired by Adidas’ innovation politcy, future-craft, we digitally hand crafted these images which would inspire sportsman of all age background for a stylistic and energetic way forward.

Last Saturday the worlds of Pinar & Viola and Dice Kayek came together for Toutes à l’école, the French non-profit that provides education to deprived girls living in Cambodia. The peplum t-shirt, which for the occasion had been adorned with the ‘Paris Heart Club’ print, was presented to the public together with the Healing Prints exhibition. The profit of the sales of the shirts goes to Toutes à l’école. The exhibition is up until the 16th if October in Dice Kayek’s pop-up store. Address: 15 Rue Saint-Benoît, 75006 Paris. We would like to thank Cyril Chateau for the photography, Sylvain Cabouat for the scenography tips, our exhibition manager Berengere de Thonel d’Orgeix for her amazingness as usual, Jacquill Glenn Basdew and Damien Girard for their warm assistance.

Pietra paesina, also called ‘landscape stone’, ‘ruin stone’, ‘ruiniform marble’ and ‘Florentine marble’, is collected for centuries. It’s a kind of limestone of which the natural veins of the rock have arranged themselves in shapes of city skylines, landscapes and ruins. The limestone needs to be cut into slabs and polished before it will reveal it’s mysterious paintings.